“Maya.”
“I’m okay.”
“That’s a lie.”
“I’m sitting upright.”
His hand found her wrist. “You’re shaking.”
At the hospital—again, though a different wing this time—Dr. Lee met them wearing a dry expression Maya had come to dread.
“You two really know how to date,” she said.
Taylor laughed in sheer relief because she was calm enough to make a joke.
The tests took hours. Longer because fear distorts clocks. Taylor sat with Maya the whole time, hand over his mouth, leg bouncing once under the chair until she told him to stop before he drilled through the floor.
When Dr. Lee finally returned, her face was serious enough that Taylor stood before she had said a word.
“Just tell me,” he said.
For one terrible second, Maya thought everything they had built had been wishful thinking. That bodies kept their own resentments regardless of effort. That maybe hope was only another form of humiliation.
Then Dr. Lee’s expression broke into a smile.
“She overdid the workout this morning, under-ate this afternoon, and forgot that improvement does not mean invincibility,” the doctor said. “Low blood sugar, exhaustion, and a minor blood pressure drop. That’s the immediate answer.”
Taylor stared. “And the bigger answer?”
Dr. Lee looked at Maya first, then at him. “The bigger answer is that her cardiac function has improved significantly. Her blood pressure is better controlled than I’ve seen it in months. She’s lost just over fifty pounds in a way that is medically meaningful, not cosmetic. The strain markers are down. If she continues like this—with common sense, which seems in short supply tonight—her prognosis is very good.”
Taylor sat down abruptly.
Maya laughed once, then started crying.
Dr. Lee handed her tissues without ceremony. “You’re not cured of being human,” she said. “But you are no longer on the path you were on.”
When the doctor left, the room held a different kind of silence than hospitals usually do. Not fear. Not yet joy. Something in between—shock, relief, grief for the months spent expecting less.
Taylor dropped his face into his hands.
Maya had never seen him cry before.
Not elegantly. Not in the careful male way of letting one tear escape in profile. He cried like a man who had held himself too rigid for too long and could no longer keep the seams together. Quietly, but without concealment. Shoulders shaking once. Breath catching. Hands pressed to his eyes.
